'You'll soon see what Earth's like.'

That bothered him too. Did they know that Earth was his home planet? What were they going to do there?

They waited in silence until the ship landed, its rotor falling still with a ping ping. Dr Who operated the scanner and a pleasant green landscape was presented. A discarded crisp packet fluttered by, spoiling the image.

'London, England, Earth, 2001.'

'The time you picked me up from!' Jason exclaimed.

'The precise day. And I'm sure you'll agree, Jason, that this place and time, more than any other, reveals the full extent of 146 the Doctor's reprehensible villainy.'

'Absolutely.'

'I don't understand.' Chris was 953 years before his own birthdate. His mind raced to call up details of long-forgotten history lessons.

'This is a world in chaos.' Dr Who began to pace and make extravagant gestures in much the same manner as the Doctor when in full flow. 'Crime, pollution, starvation, war, the rich becoming richer off the backs of the ever more poverty-stricken undercla.s.s. Greed is king as people covet material wealth and power, regardless of the consequences to others and to their environment.'

Chris swallowed. It all sounded so much like the Earth of his own time: the one he had heard of in newscasts and refused to believe in until he had had to flee the vengeance of a conspiracy exposed. Those newscasts always claimed that things had been better in the past.

'But what's that got to do with the Doctor?'

'You may not realize this,' said Dr Who, 'but, according to the TARDIS, the Doctor visited this planet almost as often as all the other civilized worlds of the universe put together.'

'I . . . think he did express a preference.' Heck, he had picked up Chris here and brought him back since; he knew everything about the place. Dr Who was telling the truth!

'To my distorted reflection, this planet was an opportunity to work his mischief. The Doctor treated Earth like a grand, perverse experiment, to indulge his cruelest whims as he traded in deprivation and misery. Now he's gone, we can tidy up!'

The dark became suffused with light. Red, blue and yellow; strong, primary colours. They merged and formed new, subtler tones. The thunder began and, less obtrusively but closer by, the bubbling of liquids. An ozone smell started life as an abstract notion before taking on actuality. Cold water dripped onto the Doctor's face like pin p.r.i.c.ks and coaxed him away from solitude, into the new world. Reality was remade in a minute and a half.

147.

Ace emerged from the side street and into the blinding winter sunshine and cold, crisp air of Tottenham Court Road. She donned her shades and inspected her surroundings. Same old crowds, same London traffic (ah! - but wasn't that a T-reg Taxi? What year would that make it?), same old Centre Point: a concrete sentry over the busy junction. The air was heavier than she was used to, pollution refracting the shop lights and the early Christmas illuminations. Ace gave a wry smile, walking past the McDonalds branch she had briefly worked in a lifetime ago. Not many places survived her presence so long.

She crossed as soon as the traffic eased and jogged down Charing Cross Road (she considered the tube, but this was healthier and she'd been out of practice). She could have got closer, but materializing in public was something the Doctor would have frowned upon. She had chosen the nearest, most likely deserted spot she could remember from her fries-shovelling days. Even so, she had risked unravelling the s.p.a.ce/time continuum or perhaps providing an old drunk with an anecdote no one would believe.

She paused at a news vendor's and read the date on the Standard Standard: 30 November 2002. Three days cajoling the semi-sentient hopper, coaxing better-than-normal accomplishments from it, and still she couldn't get all the way to 2004. Mind you, this wasn't bad. She flashed it a brief thought of grat.i.tude as she hurried on towards Leicester Square.

She had had no right to expect this century at all, really.

The Doctor inspected the laboratory, sniffing the boiling Contents of a gla.s.s beaker to learn that it contained only green-dyed water. The room was a clutter of test tubes and jars and electrical equipment labelled 'Amp Extractor', 'Light Year Timer' and other improbabilities. A vat of murky liquid on the main bench professed to hold a 'Naughty Brain' and warned the user not to place it in home-built humanoid heads.

The Doctor's curiosity was shared by Bernice, who wandered about and touched everything. Melanie perched on a stool and shook her head repeatedly as if hoping to wake up. Roslyn was nonplussed but attentive, waiting for an explanation.

148.

'I knew it,' said Benny at length. 'h.e.l.l is a mad scientist's lab, and you're in charge of it!'

'This isn't h.e.l.l,' the Doctor a.s.sured her. It's only a sequel.'

'To what?'

'To our encounter with Jason and his ident.i.ty-usurping colleague.'

'So where are we?' Roz asked. She looked up as thunder crashed overhead. Rain sliced onto and through the cracked pavement lights and formed a puddle on the wooden floor. A jagged lightning fork cast her face into relief.

'In what is obviously Jason's idea of my headquarters.'

'You mean he created this?' said Mel.

'Somehow, I don't think he just found it here.'

'We're dealing with someone who possesses a real comic book mentality,' Benny considered, frowning at a meter which purported to measure neutron flows in gigacurrents.

'Don't knock it,' said the Doctor, 'it's that mentality which kept us alive when, by rights, we should have been blasted to ashes. Jason considers me the arch-enemy of Dr Who, so in true comic book style, he refused to let me die in s.p.a.ce.

Subconsciously or otherwise, he saved us and brought us here.'

'To where, exactly?' asked Mel.

'To a room, it seems, conspicuous by its lack of exits.'

'No worries,' Benny chipped in. 'I'm sure our benefactor will have thought to give us a secret door.'

'I'm sure,' the Doctor agreed. 'And, wherever and whenever we turn out to be, I think I can guarantee one more thing.'

'Oh?'

'We're in a sequel. Another clash between Dr Who and his malevolent doppelganger. That means the TARDIS is undoubtedly on its way.'

The TARDIS had materialized by the lake in St James's Park, providing eight sober locals with an anecdote no one would believe. Its occupants headed onto the Mall, along which Dr Who strolled, hands behind his back, enjoying the faint breeze of the warm July morning. Jason kept pace, but Chris lagged 149 behind and watched his two allies carefully.

'Why are we in England?' asked Jason. 'Surely America is a far more evil place? Or Russia?'

'One step at a time, my boy,' the older man said, with the air of a kindly tutor. 'This world's system of national boundaries is like none I've encountered elsewhere. The Doctor enjoyed pitting country against country and watching them fight for religion or territory or simply to profit from each other's misfortunes. We have more than a world's fair share of wicked rulers to depose before Earth can finally know peace. We may as well start with those whose misdeeds we are most familiar with.'

'Where are we going?'

Dr Who produced an umbrella from nowhere. It was uncannily like the Doctor's own, right down to the red question mark-shaped handle. He twirled it, pointed down the straight, tree-lined road and answered: 'There!'

Chris strained to see past the imposing marble statue at the road's end. He was getting the sick feeling that this was an important place, historically speaking.

The newspaper archives of Westminster Library had been computerized, but the available search categories didn't suit Ace's admittedly rather esoteric requirements. She spent several long hours poring over headlines, most of which concerned the Golden Jubilee celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II. She was hot and wanted to take off the trenchcoat and backpack, but she knew how her fellow researchers might react to the hopper's appearance. The organism slept, its pulsating body warm on her shoulders.

The evening had drawn in by the time Ace stepped out onto St Martin's Street, well satisfied. She squinted to read her print-out: the salient details of the top ten weirdest reported events of the century thus far. She had given special weighting to mentions of time travel, proximity to London, all the usual things. It was her best shot. She would visit each of the ten events in order, beginning with the most recent. If she couldn't find the Doctor or his sc.u.mbag double mixed up in at least one 150 of them, she would eat her shades.

Ace took one last look at the London of late 2002, then muttered: 'Been here, done this!' and set about locating a secluded corner from which to vanish.

The Doctor and his three companions emerged into the underground station at Victoria Embankment. When they looked back, the steps they had climbed were no longer there, and Bernice swore that the siting of the laboratory was geographically impossible.

The Doctor physically deflated as they climbed yet more stairs to the surface. 'Earth,' he grumbled. 'I might have known.'

'What year is it?' asked Forrester.

'About the turn of the twenty-first century to judge by the level of pollutants in the atmosphere. We're in Jason's time.'

He hurried ahead, out into the light, and set a brisk pace along the river bank. Mel couldn't help but feel disappointed that the quality of Thames water had not improved since 1986. Or rather, she reminded herself, since 1999, when an earlier Doctor had brought her here.

Whilst Bernice and Forrester pointed out features of historical interest to each other, Mel moved to the Doctor's side. There were several things she wanted to say. She began with the easiest. 'I don't like the company you're keeping. Those two would shoot you without batting an eyelid!'

'A little unfair,' he said.

'But you hate guns!'

'Dirty tools for a dirty job.'

'You never used to travel with people like that. What happened to that lovely young girl, what was her name? Ace?'

'I want to ask you something, Mel: what would you do if you had infinite power?'

'I'm sorry?'

'A simple enough question. Jason's power is near infinite.

Imagine what it must have taken to create and control the character of Dr Who within my own TARDIS over an interstellar distance. Now he's come back to Earth for a reason, 151 so what do you think it might be?'

Mel pondered that. 'If it was me, I suppose I'd be tempted to sort everyone out. Stop unfair things happening, disarm weapons, share wealth more evenly. I wouldn't, of course.

There's no excuse for creating that kind of dictatorship, no matter how n.o.ble the motives.'

'Do you think our friend appreciates that?'

'Do you think his motives are n.o.ble?'

'Naive, perhaps, and immature. But Jason is basically no villain. Where would he start?'

'By confronting the present rulers. At 10 Downing Street. Or the Houses of Parliament.'

'Do they exist in this era?' Bernice asked, attracted by the turn the conversation had taken.

'Oh yes.'

Mel frowned. 'In fact, we're walking towards them.' The Doctor nodded happily. 'And have been ever since we left Embankment station! So what was the questioning in aid of?'

'I knew you'd get there eventually.'

Dr Who gripped the railings of Buckingham Palace's east gate and called to the yeomen of the guard, immobile and impa.s.sive in their positions. 'You heard me, I wish to speak to the Queen!'

Chris hovered uneasily, a few feet away. A scattering of tourists remained from the changing of the guard and he felt the unwelcome attention of sensation-seeking eyes from around the Victoria Memorial. A policeman pushed across the plaza and Chris pointed this out to Jason. 'Shouldn't you tell him to stop?'

Jason shook his head.

'If she won't see me,' Dr Who shouted, 'I shall a.s.sume that she's complicit with the injustices of this country's governmental system. I will contact the underground movement, lead it against her and install a more suitable monarch in her place.'

The constable tapped his shoulder and the crowd closed in with gleeful antic.i.p.ation. 'Might I ask what you're trying to do, sir?' he enquired with strained politeness.

Dr Who greeted him enthusiastically. 'Ah, officer, you might 152 be able to help me. I wish to give your Queen a dressing-down, sort her out on one or two small points. But those . . . those red-frocked puppets -' He indicated the implacable guardsmen with an angry sweep of his arm. are conspiring to be wilfully obstructive!'

'Indeed, sir.'

'Dumb insolence, that's what it is.'

'Perhaps,' the policeman said, so polite now as to be positively sarcastic, 'Her Majesty does not wish to entertain visitors?'

'Then she should come out and tell me herself!'

The policeman shook his head wearily. 'If you have something to say to the Queen, I suggest you write her a letter.

In the meantime, please keep the gates clear. These people don't want an anti-royalist weirdo staring out of their souvenir photographs and I'd hate to clutter up police cells by arresting you for loitering.' He pivoted and marched off, leaving Dr Who to stare, bewildered, after him. Some tourists left. Most lingered to see if this demented man would do something else strange.

They weren't disappointed.

'What are you doing?' squeaked Jason, as Dr Who took hold of the railings again and hauled himself upwards.

'Getting myself arrested. It's the best way to contact rebel groups.' The gates were almost twenty feet high, but plenty of footholds allowed him to scale them in seconds. He clambered over the ornamental fleurs-de-lis, dropped to the far side and yelled: 'Hey, officer, come and look what I've done!' The policeman didn't hear him, or pretended not to. He turned into Buckingham Gate and Dr Who scowled after him. 'Blind imbecile!' He looked around as if seeing where he was for the first time. 'Still, now I'm here, I might be able to meet this Elizabeth woman after all. Perhaps she's unaware of her underlings' actions?'

'But there are beefeaters on the door,' protested Jason.

'So? They can't move, can they?'

'I think they might,' offered Chris, 'if you try waltzing in.'

Dr Who smiled, turned and sauntered towards the unguarded 153 visitors' entrance at the left-hand end of the Palace's stone frontage. A ripple of excitement spread through the crowd and Chris covered his eyes.

As Dr Who reached the door, it was yanked open. Four men emerged and halted, surprised at having run straight into the bizarrely dressed intruder. He doffed his hat and made to introduce himself.

Six more men hurtled around the building's corner. Those in the doorway recovered their wits and moved into action. Before he could speak, Dr Who was forcefully wrestled to the ground.

In the shadow of the Houses of Parliament, the Doctor looked towards Westminster Bridge and wistfully recalled a time when Evil was just that and destroying it entailed no moral complications. The Daleks would parade themselves across that landmark, two centuries hence, their message to the people of Earth: that London had fallen.

He shuddered at the notion that those might somehow have been the 'good times'. In a real sense, he had been responsible for the Dalek invasion himself. He had landed in its midst, after all, out of all Earth's possible futures at the time. How many deaths had he caused that way, as a casual by-product of his interference? How many tragedies that should never have happened? He recalled Gabriel and Tanith, embodiments of the lives snuffed out by such tragedies; of the people who would never exist in his his universe. universe.

This shouldn't have happened.

He should not have been here, bereft of his ship. But his plan had gone wrong, he had not foreseen Jason's intervention, and his companions were in peril as a consequence. Would he never learn?